Event

Introduction and discussion led by Political Film Scholar and Journalist Jack Brindelli.

After the sad passing of the legendary American horror auteur George A. Romero, the Manifesto Film Festival is hosting a special screening of Night of the Living Dead.

The screening will give cult horror fans in Amsterdam the opportunity to celebrate the Godfather of the modern zombie film, along with the opportunity to discuss the landmark film's legacy, half a century after its original release.

Despite this being the film's 50th anniversary, it remains uncomfortably fresh, particularly thanks to its reflection of a Disunited States of America, amid the generational, racial and class-based antagonisms of May 68.

Filmed on a tiny budget at a time of global civil unrest, George A. Romeros Dead series debut drew together themes of race and the Other in an America where white-supremacy was rife. While the movie's infamous climax paralleled the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. at the time, viewers will still find an uncomfortable similarity with mainstream reactions to what should be an uncontroversial assertion, that 'Black Lives Matter'.

Meanwhile, another of the film's most shocking scenes at the time, reflecting the 'monstrous' light in which parents saw their rebellious children rioting against the Vietnam war, the film also draws clear parallels with Trumps America. An America where an increasingly dogmatic generation of Baby Boomers seem willing to stop at nothing to save themselves from the perceived threat of their allegedly ungrateful, lazy, liberal children and grandchildren. - Jack Brindelli